Exporting data to delimited ASCII (AskiaTools)

Use this feature to export data from a QES file or SQL database to delimited ASCII file format. There is a choice of delimiters (for example commas, to make a CSV file).

To export data in delimited ASCII format:

  1. In the file menu, select export, then delimited ASCII.... The delimited ASCII export dialog appears:
  2. In target file, specify the ASCII target file (i.e. name the target file and specify where it is to be saved).
  3. In the settings section, specify which separators are to be used in your delimited ASCII file.
  4. Set the other options, as described below.
  5. Click OK to proceed.

  6.  If you opted to export a selection of questions (rather than all questions), you are now presented with a list of the questions in your QES:

  7. Copy the questions you want to export to the right-hand list, by using the following buttons:
    move_right Copies the selected question to the right-hand list;
    move_all_right Copies all questions to the right-hand list;
    move_left Removes the selected question from the right-hand list;
    move_all_left Removes all questions from the right-hand list.

  8. Once you are satisfied with the questions you have in the right-hand list, click OK. Your data is exported to delimited ASCII format.

Delimited ASCII export options

Option Description

ASCII file

Type the path and filename of the output file (where the data will be stored), or click ... and specify the path and filename in the file dialog.

Export in Unicode

Select this option to export Unicode data (for non-Latin alphabets).

Question separator

Indicates the question separator ("TAB", ";", ":", ",").

Multiple response separator

Indicates the response's separator for multiple-response questions ("TAB", ";", ":", ",").

Always export the same number of multiple response separators

This option determines how many separators are written to the export file for multi-coded questions.

If the option is selected, the same number of separators will be exported for every record, no matter how many responses were actually selected by the respondent. The actual number of separators will be one less than the number of responses in the question (e.g. in a question with 10 responses, there would  be 9 separators).

If this option is not selected, sufficient separators are written to separate the selected responses, and no more (i.e. one less than the number of selected responses).

For example, if a given respondent has selected 5 responses out of 8 in total...

  • If this option was selected, there would be 7 separators for this question in the record.

  • If this option was not selected, there would be 4 separators for this question in the record.

Question captions on the first row

Check this option to insert question captions in the first line of the ASCII file.

Always use '.' as the decimal point

Check this option to indicate that the decimal point should always be output as '.'
Use importation parameters instead of shortcuts Select this option to use importation parameters instead of question shortcuts (where they are available) in the header.

Export semi-open data

Check this option to include semi-open responses in the export.

Export closed

Specifies the format of items for the closed questions. It is possible to export the "response order", the "captions", the "entry codes" or the " numeric entry codes" of items.

You can also opt to export multi-coded questions as binary (i.e. with 1s to indicate that the data was selected).

Export questions

Specifies which questions are to be exported. It is possible to export all the questions, all the open-ended questions or a selection of questions (you will be able to specify these questions later in the export process).

Export completes only

Select this option if you want to export completed interviews only.

Interview started after

Allows you to export interviews that were begun after the specified date. You can, therefore, use this feature to export new data that has been collected since a previous export.

Additional filter

Allows you to specify a custom data filter by specifying an AskiaScript condition. Click ... to open a secondary dialog where you can define your condition.
Create your own Knowledge Base